Merry Christmas!!! The Dr. Bill – The Computer Curmudgeon Podcast is ready for you!Dr. Bill Podcast – 16 – (12/24/05)
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Google antes up 1 BILLION for AOL, a small victory for Mozilla and Firefox… the RSS icon!, No IE for Macs!, What to buy as a Christmas present for the Geek in your life, PC virii… we may not be as safe as we think, Geek Software of the Week: PopTray!, Microsoft releases a new Lornhorn Beta, the first update is out for OpenOffice 2.0!, Seagate Buys Maxtor for ~$2 Billion!, Is StarTrek.com dying?, Symantec Norton Anti-Virus flaw, Spyware infection leads to EVEN MORE Spyware infections, “Santa IM Worm…” installs Rootkit payload, the Dell Firefox installation rumor confirmed!, Who’s Afraid of the Ten Commandments?, Fun Things to Do With a USB Thumbdrive!, NetBSD Version 3.0 is Out… and it supports the Zen multi-OS software!

It is out and get this… “New in NetBSD 3: native support for the Xen virtual machine monitor! With native Xen support on Intel platforms, NetBSD provides seamless support for execution of multiple guest operating systems with unprecedented levels of performance and resource isolation.” Cool!

Apparently not the folks in Kentucky. They had a simple, small display of a wall in the Courthouse, along with other historical documents that represent the history of law in the United States. Well, of course, the ACLU would have none of that! After all, I’m sure they thought, the Ten Commandments might warp the mind of some poor, unsuspecting youth that might wander in and read these heinous statements, “Thou shalt not kill?!!” Why, how could one play a video game in peace!?! But, it seems the Federal Appeals Court didn’t buy it!

“Judge Richard Suhrheinrich’s ruling said the ACLU brought ‘tiresome’ arguments about the ‘wall of separation’ between church and state, and it said the organization does not represent a ‘reasonable person.’ The decision was issued by a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati. It upheld a lower-court decision that allowed Mercer County to continue displaying the Ten Commandments along with the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the words to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and other documents. All of the items were posted at the same time in 2001.”

It is interesting how a country founded on “Freedom OF Religion,” has become known as a country that has elements trying to achieve “Free FROM Religion.” There IS a small difference, ya know.

“The worm, identified as IM.GiftCom.All, was discovered by researchers at IMLogic Inc.’s Threat Center spreading via IM and attempting to trick users into clicking on a malicious URL.

The link lures the target into visiting a harmless Santa Claus Web site, but actually installs a rootkit payload to the victim’s machine, IMLogic said in an advisory.

‘The rootkit payload is often named gift.com and when executed hides itself on the user’s system, attempts to shutdown desktop anti-virus software and starts collecting the infected user’s information for broadcast over the Internet,’ the company explained.”

The Spyware evilness is getting worse! There is a new spike in Spyware activity, especially among infections that lead to pop-ups that say, “You are infected with Spyware… click here to have your system cleaned!” DON’T DO IT! You will then receive a boatload of additional Spyware! These guys should be shot!

First, a disclaimer, I have never cared for Norton Anti-Virus. In fact, it stinks! We use it where I work, but I don’t trust it. I have seen it fail too many times, I have seen it compromised too many times, in short, it is just slightly better than nothing at all. That said, it is now worse! A flaw has been found in Symantec Norton Anti-Virus that allows it to be compromised.

There are rumors that the StarTrek.com website may go offline on December 31st. This would be a shame! I admit, I mainly go there only for the great Star Trek desktop backgrounds, but still, this would be history being lost!

I hope that the additional rumor that Gene Roddenberry’s son, Rod, will try to take over the site to keep it alive, is true. Rod is already involved in an IPTV version of Star Trek, called “New Voyages” (see the link under my Cool Links section.)

This Week’s Dr. Bill.TV Netcast!

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